European Union (Megiddo)
The European Union is the world's singular democratic superpower and one of the large supernations that control earth initially in the early 21st Century, the others being the Holy Britannian Empire and the Chinese Federation until the latter's annexation. 'History' In Flames of Revolution The history of the European Union, in a direct context, began in 1789, with the calling of the French Estates General in Paris. Brought together to find solutions to the economic and social problems that plagued France at the time, the estates soon found themselves divided between the First and Second estates - the Clergy and the Nobility respectively, and the Third estate; everyone else. Though the Third estate outnumbered the other two by a considerable margin, it was sidelined by a voting system in which each estate had one vote; allowing the First and Second estates to outvote it. Frustrated Third estate delegates met in the Tennis Court at Versailles on June 20th, swearing their famous oath not to separate until their demands were met. Unable and perhaps unwilling to use force to break them up, King Louis XVI recognised the validity of the 'National Constituent Assembly', as the delegates called themselves. Nevertheless, many Parisians feared that the King or the other two estates would attempt to break the new assembly by force. On July 14th a Paris mob marched on the infamous Bastille fortress, demanding that its garrison surrender and hand over the weapons rumoured to be stockpiled within. The garrison fought back, until army defectors - including the King's own Gardes Francaises Regiment, arrived to support the Parisians. The Bastille fell in the afternoon, and the French Revolution was underway. Over the next three years, France would go from absolute monarchy, to constitutional monarchy, to revolutionary republic. Tainted by his attempt to escape from Paris in June of 1791, Louis XVI was later deposed and then executed in 1792. But significant changes had taken place in French society well before then. The year 1789 saw the abolition of feudalism and clerical privileges, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the writing of France's first modern Constitution. In April of 1792, with tensions mounting across Europe, France declared war on Austria and Prussia. The execution of the King brought Britannia, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands into the war in 1793. As France was slowly crushed under the combined might of Europe, the new French government - dominated by the Jacobin party - turned to ever more radical measures in order to survive. In an attempt to properly organise the hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen who had volunteered to fight for their country, the government issued the so-called Levée en Masse ''edict in August of 1793. It's opening words set the tone for the war to come; ''From this moment until such time as its enemies shall have been driven from the soil of the Republic, all Frenchmen are in permanent requisition for the services of the armies. The young men shall fight; the married men shall forge arms and transport provisions; the women shall make tents and clothes and shall serve in the hospitals; the children shall turn old lint into linen; the old men shall betake themselves to the public squares in order to arouse the courage of the warriors and preach hatred of kings and the unity of the Republic. The actual mobilisation did not quite reach the levels this paragraph implied, but it was nevertheless beyond anything seen before. By september of 1794, French armies had a fighting strength of around 800,000, supported by a vast military-industrial complex overseen by the mathematician Lazare Carnot. But France's troubles had been political as well as military in this period. 1791 and 1792 had seen political chaos in France, and especially in Paris. Widespread fears of Royalist plots and foreign invasion repeatedly spilled over into violence, with riots in many cases deliberately stirred up by agitating journalists such as Jean Paul Marat and Jacques Hebert. In one particular incident in September of 1792, mobs of National Guardsmen stormed the prisons of Paris and killed thousands of prisoners, most of them petty criminals. The situation grew ever more volatile, as the extremist Montagnard and moderate Girondin parties struggled for control. The Girondins were by this point in decline, discredited by the failure of a war they had started, and which they had promised would spread republicanism and liberty across the whole of Europe. Their final defeat came on May 31st 1793, when a mob of sans-culottes (as the rank-and-file militants were known) stormed the Tuileries Palace and threatened the Convention; as the elected legislature of France was now known. Led by Jacques Roux and Jacques Hebert - members of a radical clique known as the Enraged - they issued a series of demands, including the arrest of 29 Girondin leaders. The Convention had no choice but to comply, leaving the Montagnards in effective control alongside their allies; the Jacobin movement. The rise of the Jacobins to power, culminating in the election of Maximilien Robespierre to the Committee of Public Safety in July 1793, would mark the start of a new era; the Reign of Terror. In many ways, Robespierre's 'terror' was a backlash against the chaos of the years preceding it. For men like Marat and Hebert, liberty was embodied in the mob, in the armed citizenry unleashing righteous violence against all who would decieve or oppress them. For Robespierre, liberty lay in inner virtue and public order, to be imposed by any means necessary. But if Robespierre and the Committee put an end to the terror of the mob and the agitator, they replaced it with the terror of the state. Jacobin France became in many respects a totalitarian state, with dissent of any kind coming to be regarded as counter-revolutionary. Of the tens of thousands executed in the course of Robespierre's tenure, around seventy per cent were workers or peasants; their crimes usually being hoarding, draft-dodging, desertion, or even outright rebellion. But his ruthlessness only served to weaken his grip over time, as revolutionary virtue came to be associated with endless bloodletting. Robespierre ended up making enemies everywhere, not least by his executions of revolutionary heroes such as Georges Danton, Jacques Hebert, and Camille Desmoulins. The final straw for many was his attempt to impose a new religion; the Cult of the Supreme Being. He then made the mistake of summoning any officials or representants en mission who refused to help implement the new religion back to Paris to answer for their actions; a case of keeping his enemies too close. On 8 Thermidor (26 July 1794), Robespierre further provoked his enemies with a ranting speech before the Convention, alluding to 'traitors' while failing to name names; thus convincing many that they were next for the guilloutine. The next day, the Convention turned on Robespierre, condemning him as a tyrant and a man of blood. Robespierre and his followers fled the Hall of Liberty under the protection of loyal troops, only to be captured later at the Hotel de Ville. Robespierre and 21 of his colleagues were condemned and executed on 10 Thermidor (28 July 1794). The Thermidorian Reaction, as the overthrow of Robespierre came to be known, brought its own brand of chaos. The dismantling of the Committee's terror regime also led to the dismantling of its economic controls, exemplified by the 'Law of Maximum.' The result was uncontrollable inflation, with paper currency degrading to as little as 3% of its assigned value. The refusal of farmers to accept the 'assignats' led to food shortages and outright famine throughout the country. By contrast, the better-off in French society met this time of crisis with an outbreak of decadance. Known as Incroyables and Merveillueses, these men and women revelled in self-expression through luxurious, over-blown fashions. It was the female Merveillueses ''who popularised a revival of ancient Greek and Roman styles in female fashion, scandalizing polite society with high-waisted, low-cut, and sometimes see-through dresses and tunics. The movement even had a militant wing in the form of the ''Muscadins, or jeunesse doree, dandyish youths who made a habit of attacking known or suspected Jacobins or sans-culottes with wooden sticks. May of 1795 saw the last hurrah of the sans-culottes when, on 1 Prairial, a Parisian mob stormed the Convention and tried to force it to release Jacobin prisoners and ensure food supplies. The rebels were put down by loyal troops, and the Paris mob would not rise again for many decades. Boosted by this, and military success outside of France, the Convention spent the following months crushing what remained of the Jacobin movement and voting to reorganise itself. These measures, which included an electoral college and a bicameral legislature, were as much as anything else intended to protect the Convention's members from prosecution or revenge over their past deeds. Directory and Consulate It is at this point that one of the pivotal figures in European and world history finally made his entrance. In spite of the repeated failure of Britannian-backed Royalist invasions, the arrival of Charles Philippe, Comte d'Artois, on French soil galvanised the Royalist movement. Ill-feeling towards the Convention was widespread, with Royalists taking the lead. On 12 Vendemiare (4th October), while Muscadins and other Royalists demonstrated in the streets, six sections of Paris declared against the Convention, and mobilised their National Guardsmen. By the time the Convention understood the danger it was in, at midnight on the morning of 13 Vendemiaire, it had only five thousand loyal troops under the command of General de Menou with which to fend off a Royalist uprising of between thirty and forty thousand. This uprising might well have succeeded, if not for the frantic efforts of two particular individuals. One was Joachim Murat, a cavalry officer who managed to fight his way through to Sablon and return with forty cannons left there by de Menou. The other was a Corsican artillery officer, who had given Murat his orders to fetch the guns, and who would command them in the fighting to come. His name was Napoleon Bonaparte. Born on the island of Corsica in 1769, a year after it had been transferred from Genoese sovereignty to that of France, Bonaparte was destined to seek his fortune in the service of France. Educated in Autun from 1779, and the military academy at Brienne-la-Chateau, his childhood was lonely and marred by bullying; often over the Italian accent he would never quite shake off. He nevertheless coped through a combination of bloody-mindedness and rambunctious self-confidence. His success at Brienne took him to the Ecole Militaire ''in Paris in 1784, from which he graduated after only one year to be commissioned in the La Fère artillery regiment. Like many artillery officers, a highly educated and professional bunch by the standards of the time, he developed an interest in reform and revolutionary politics, becoming a member of the Jacobin club. His first attempt at playing politics was in his native Corsica, where he served as a lieutenant-colonel of Corsican militia under the command of the nigh-legendary nationalist leader Pasquale Paoli. After the failure of an attack on Maddalena Island in February of 1793, Bonaparte became convinced that Paoli was a Royalist and a Britannian agent; the former was entirely true, the latter only partially so. After trying and failing to overthrow Paoli, Bonaparte was forced to flee with his family to mainland France in June of 1793. Corsica became a protectorate of the Britannian Empire, only to be reconquered by France in 1796. Despite this failure, great things awaited Bonaparte. He won fame at the Siege of Toulon, gaining a reputation as a dynamic leader and skilled tactician. Promoted to Brigadier General, he was given command of the artillery of the Army of Italy. The campaign of 1794, based on his plans, drove the Austrian Empire from northern Italy, winning the War of the First Coalition for France. But the fall of Robespierre left his career in limbo, and even as he dispersed the Royalists with a 'whiff of grapeshot' on 13 Vendemiaire, the Convention was turning itself into a new government; the Directory. The new government was distinctly modern, with a bicameral legislature and an executive made up of five 'Directors'. It nevertheless proved unpopular, in part because so many of its members were formerly of the Convention, including some of those who signed Louis XVI's death warrant. Fearful of being assassinated if they tried to return to private life, the Directory's members held onto power by any means necessary; to the point of ignoring their own 1795 Constitution, overriding unfavourable election results, and using the army to suppress dissent. If the French people had hoped for a moderate, compromise government that would put an end to the ideological strife and bloodshed of previous years, what they got was an ineffectual, self-perpetuating oligarchy. The response of the majority was bitter, cynical indifference. The Directory's one saving grace was military success, in which Bonaparte played a considerable role. After marrying Josephine Beauharnais in March of 1796, Bonaparte returned to Italy as commanding General of the Army of Italy. He found a badly-supplied and demoralised army, and led it to some of his most spectacular victories. Early in 1798, perhaps hoping to stay out of the ever-paranoid Directory's way, Bonaparte proposed the invasion and conquest of Egypt; with a view to gaining greater access to France's allies in India and disrupting Britannian trade. On the way, he made a brief detour to capture the island of Malta, defended by the Knights of Saint John (otherwise known as the Hospitallers). The French-dominated order surrendered after a brief struggle, its members having no desire to fight fellow Frenchmen, regardless of their politics. Strange rumours have nevertheless surrounded the order's surrender, as they would surround Bonaparte for much of his life. Bonaparte landed in Egypt in July, and defeated the Egyptian Mamluks in a series of brutal battles. Even when a Britannian fleet under Horatio Nelson destroyed his supporting fleet at the Battle of the Nile, Bonaparte continued his advance north into Syria. Despite capturing several towns, he failed to capture the vital fortress of Acre, and was forced to withdraw his plague-ridden army into Egypt. In 1799, having heard of French military defeats in Europe, Bonaparte managed to return to France. He returned to a hero's welcome, and although technically guilty of desertion, the moribund Directory was too weak to punish him. Bonaparte was by this point convinced that the Directory had to go, and he was far from alone. With the help of his brother Lucien, he formed an alliance with two of the Five Directors; Joseph Fouché and Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès. Other co-conspirators included Foreign Minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, and Roger Ducos, Speaker of the Council of Five Hundred. On 18 Brumaire (9 November), Lucien told the two councils that the Jacobins - who had been driven from power in June - were planning a counter-coup. The councils took his advice and moved to the Chateau de Saint-Cloud, while Bonaparte himself was given command of all local troops. Sieyès and Ducos resigned as Directors, and pressured Paul Barras to do likewise. The remaining two Directors, Louis Gohier and Jean-François-Auguste Moulin, were arrested and forced to cooperate. By the next day, the two councils had realized that they were facing a coup. Despite being surrounded by Bonaparte's troops, they refused to cooperate with him or his co-conspirators. When Bonaparte faced the Council of Five Hundred, he was physically assaulted and had to be rescued by his escort of grenadiers. Lucien told the troops outside that armed deputies were threatening the rest of the council, pointing to Bonaparte's injuries as proof. In a gesture that would echo in history, he put his sword to his brother's heart and promised to plunge it in if he ever proved a traitor. The grenadiers stormed the building and expelled the deputies. In the evening, a remnant of the Council of Ancients legalized the coup and invested power in a new tripartite Consulate, consisting of Bonaparte, Ducos, and Sieyès. But Bonaparte was not content to let Sieyès take power for himself, or to share power with two others. In the months that followed he worked to consolidate his position, a task made easier by his standing with the army. A public referendum of 7 February 1800 confirmed the new constitution, which vested primary executive power in the hands of the First Consul, Bonaparte himself; leaving the other two with only nominal powers. Of the three legislative assemblies set up under the new constitution, only the Sénat conservateur had any real power.' Bonaparte's position was further strengthened by a military victory at Marengo on 14 June, where his Consular Guards won fame. A military march composed in their honour became an informal lietmotif for Bonaparte himself. In December he took advantage of a royalist bomb plot to rid himself of republican as well as royalist opposition. He was assisted in this by Sieyès, now head of the Senate. By this point, First Consul Bonaparte was in effect the ruler of France. '''Empire of Liberty It is between 1800 and 1804 that Napoleon Bonaparte's story takes a strange turn. By the turn of 1801 he was First Consul of France, in practice a King in all but name. Though infuriating to hardliners on both the political Left and Right, his regime was broadly acceptable to, even popular with, the bulk of the French population. After years of chaos and bloodshed, it seemed that France finally had a statesmanlike leader, capable of solving the Republic's myriad problems. Of his many reforms, one of the most significant was the Code civil des Français (popularly dubbed the 'Bonapartic Code'), which came into force in March of 1804. Aside from guaranteeing freedom of religion and abolishing birth privileges, the code completely revamped the French legal system, replacing the patchwork feudal system and newer revolutionary legislation with a single, universal code; which drew heavily on ancient Roman law. Major changes included the introduction of juries for criminal trials, and a guarantee of legal counsel for all defendants. He also revamped the administration, and began a series of public works projects intended to improve infrastructure and encourage trade. In religious matters, this period saw the 1801 Concordat between Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII. It maintained the principle of secularism (laicite), and required that all priests swear an oath to the state (in return for paying their salaries), but in return acknowledged Catholicism as the majority religion and allowed the Church to depose bishops (though the state still nominated them). But Bonaparte was not the same man as he had been in 1791. While he still broadly believed in the ideals of the Revolution, their innocence (much like his own) had long since been lost. For Bonaparte, liberty, equality, and fraternity all had to defer to the maintenance of public order. One of his darkest memories was of the Massacre of the Swiss Guards in Paris; where he claimed to have seen Parisian women beheading twelve-year-old drummer boys and parading their heads on pikes. In a meeting of his inner circle, he described his attitude thusly; You say that I have oppressed liberty? What is this thing called liberty? What is this ideal so many have died for? Is it the liberty of nature, as Rousseau kept waxing lyrical about? In nature, the fox devours the lamb, constrained only by the farmer. This is the liberty of the thief to rob, the mob to kill and destroy, constrained only by order. Robespierre said that virtue without terror is impotent, and that terror without virtue is blind. I say that order without liberty is tyranny, and liberty without order is chaos. '' This cynicism brought him into conflict with many in the upper echelons of the government, notably his brother Lucien. It is in the context of their relationship that another of the era's colourful characters makes her entrance. By the time of the Brumaire Coup, Cecile Cathcart was already a well-known figure in the salons of Paris, renowned for her beauty (especially her long green hair) and her dry wit. She claimed to be the daughter of Cecilia Cathcart, who had been Benjamin Franklin's companion after his fall from grace. Despite his historical status as a betrayer of liberty, Cecile was forever in demand for stories about him. She consistently described him in sympathetic terms, claiming that he had been the victim of a Britannian plot. Her relationship with the Bonaparte family was ambigious, but she was at the time connected with both Bonaparte and Lucien; Parisian gossip had it that she was their shared mistress. She certainly acted as a peacemaker between the two when arguments broke out, and may have helped Lucien keep Bonaparte on the straight and narrow; at least from Lucien's point of view. The question of whether Napoleon truly intended to declare himself Emperor of the French has excited scholars and conspiracy theorists for centuries, though the answer may never be known. If he really intended such a bold move, it was undoubtedly Cecile who talked him out of it. What cannot be doubted, however, is that Bonaparte intended to expand the revolution across Europe. He described to his circle what he called an 'empire of liberty', a new Europe divided into small republics led by elected 'Minister-Presidents', with France acting as the dominant power. These new republics would enjoy all the benefits of liberty, equality, and fraternity, while lacking the power to mistreat one-another or challenge France. Of the enemies France would have to defeat, the most dangerous in Bonaparte's eyes was Britannia. Backed by a global trading network, Britannia possessed financial resources with which to bribe or support other powers into attacking France. By December of 1804, with the Third Coalition menacing France, this plan was underway. It was at this time that Bonaparte created his first eighteen Marshals of France, though this was a comparatively late step in a series of military reorganisations. By this time, Bonaparte had around 200,000 troops available for field duty. These were organised into seven Corps, each a free-standing army in its own right. With anything up to 40 guns each, they could fight independently until reinforcements arrived. Bonaparte added to these a cavalry reserve of 22,000 in eight divisions, each supported by 24 guns. By 1805, this force would grow to 350,000 men. In addition, Bonaparte had his own Consular Guard of around 10,000, along with around 15,000 Gendarmes and a comparable number of National Guardsmen. With these forces, Bonaparte planned to conquer Europe. Bonaparte's first move was the Ulm Campaign, launched in August of 1805. Napoleon's plan was to approach Austria via central Germany, attacking along the Danube. With Murat advancing through the Black Forest - the traditional French invasion route - Austrian General Karl Mack von Leiberich became fixated on what was actually a feint. Not realizing that Bonaparte was outflanking him in strength to the north, Mack became confused by contradictory reconnaissance reports, and split his forces along the Danube. Bonaparte ambushed the Austrian detachments and crossed the river in force, eventually surrounding the Austrians around their base at Ulm by 16 October. With food running low and his troops mutinying, Mack surrendered his army. Ulm was a rare example of a campaign in which no major battle took place, and it would live in history as one of Bonaparte's greatest. But of arguably equal importance were the events that took place off Cape Trafalgar only two days later. A combined French and Spanish fleet under Pierre-Charles Villeneuve faced a Britannian fleet under Horatio Nelson, inflicting a decisive defeat. Bonaparte would rejoice at the news, but for the moment he had bigger problems. A Russian army had arrived to reinforce the Austrians, allowing them to pit 85,000 men against Napoleon's 75,000. Napoleon's response was to lure the allies into a trap near the town of Austerlitz, which he sprung on 2 December 1805. The victory was arguably the greatest of his career, killing or capturing over 36,000 allied troops for the loss of only 9000. '''Dark Deeds on the Danube' What happened after Austerlitz, in the opening months of 1806, is regarded as one of the darkest and strangest events in European history. The month of January saw a veritable cascade of misfortunes befall the Royal families of Europe. By the end of the month almost all of Europe's crowned heads were dead, along with many of their relatives. Their deaths varied wildly, some being obvious assassinations while others appeared to be accidents, or completely without explanation. The deaths plunged the European monarchies into turmoil, as generals and powerful nobles struggled against impromptu pro-French revolts to secure the thrones for themselves. The immediate beneficiary was Bonaparte himself, for the chaos allowed him to capture Vienna and secure Austria, while additional forces moved against other targets. Once Bonaparte had control of an area intended for a new state, he and his representatives set about the task of converting said region into one of his planned 'sister republics'. This met with varying degrees of success, as a great many Europeans resented having their countries dismantled and reformed, even as their crowned sovereigns lay piteously murdered. Bonaparte did his best to mollify such feelings, burying murdered royals with all due ceremony, and forbidding his own people from celebrating the deaths in any public way. More than once, public celebrations of the murders by hardline republicans were put down by gendarmes acting on his orders. But even so, the need to smooth ruffled feathers and minimize resistance forced Napoleon to make any number of make-do-and-mend compromises. Some of the Sister Republics would see their borders change repeatedly, as French commanders and deputies tried to resolve local disputes. The great mystery of the January Murders lies in their sheer scale. Napoleon was widely blamed for them, since he was the obvious beneficiary. But he would go to his grave denying any knowledge, and no evidence has yet been found of any knowledge or planning on the part of the French government. The scale of the killings itself suggests that it was not a single, unified operation; it would have required the coordinated efforts of hundreds, perhaps thousands of operatives. The strange nature of some of the killings in turn lent itself to conspiracy theory and strange rumors. It was put about that some of the assassins had strange, inhuman powers; for by no other means could they have completed their missions. Speculation over responsibility fell on any number of figures, including Cecile Cathcart. A tale spread that one of Bonaparte's Consular Guards had overheard an altercation between the First Consul and Cecile. The precise content varies from version to version, but the most popular rendition has Bonaparte exclaim something to the effect of "You never said anything about children! What have you done!?", ''to which Cecile replied "''I said I would help you. I gave no details, and you never asked for any. You gave no order, and I told you nothing. Your hands are clean." This sends Bonaparte into a rage, roaring "what have you turned me into, you bloody-handed witch!?" The veracity of this supposed encounter has never been proven, and seems to owe more to fevered imaginations than any actual conversation. But those close to Bonaparte all agreed that he had reacted to news of the deaths with stunned disbelief, and that his character had noticeably darkened in the following months. Though the murders had seemingly left Europe at Bonaparte's mercy, the victory was not as complete as it might have been. Of those European royals who survived the killings, the most significant were Tsar Alexander I of Russia and Empress Elizabeth III of Britannia. Also, Bonaparte was soon finding that he had underestimated the scale of the task he had undertaken. Resistance to his new order was widespread, especially in Spain, requiring the deployment of ever-greater numbers of troops to maintain control. Though Russia was out of the war for the moment, Britannia took ruthless advantage of these rebel movements; supplying them with funds and arms as best it could, despite the damage suffered to the Imperial Navy at Trafalgar. Napoleon was forced to resort to ever-more extreme measures to get the troops he needed, including the re-instatement of universal conscription. Even so, it took him until 1807 to assemble enough troops for the invasion of Britannia. His success in Britannia was a close-run thing, not so much due to Elizabeth's forces as a complete breakdown of law and order, which only the establishment of a friendly Britannian government could resolve. Ireland seemed at first to be a bright light in those dark times. Though an uprising had been crushed in 1797, French forces landing in 1807 were still able to recruit substantial numbers of Irish sympathizers. Many of these were organized into the Irish Legion, a force created by Bonaparte out of Irish revolutionaries who had fled the failed 1798 uprising, along with French officers of Irish descent; some of whom had served in the pre-revolutionary Irish Brigade. The Legion's founding members had formed an officer cadre, ready to organize Irish volunteers into conventional units upon arrival. They also formed the political elite of the new Irish Republic, and it was here that many of the republic's early problems lay. The United Irishmen, who had organized the 1798 uprising and formed the bulk of the Irish Legion's officers, tended to be Protestants of an urban background; their goal was a secular republic on the French model. But the bulk of the rank-and-file Irish rebels were Catholic peasantry, organized by groups such as the Defenders. Their goals at times overlapped, but their relationship was complicated by centuries of ill-feeling between Protestants and Catholics. The new republic's land reforms did a great deal to calm tensions and mitigate the terrible poverty of the Irish peasantry. But many Protestants continued to be suspicious of their Catholic countrymen; fearing that t their Protestant culture and religion would be persecuted by a Catholic majority. The Eagle and the Cross Even as Bonaparte worked to establish his new order in Europe, events were unfolding to the south that would put him to the ultimate test. The January Murders had sent shockwaves through the Vatican in Rome as they had through the whole of Europe. The death of countless Catholic royalty, along with a great many high-level prelates, had thrown the Church into turmoil. Pope Pius VII had managed thus far to act as a moderating influence, but between the Murders and Bonaparte's policies in his new territories, his moderation was starting to look like collaboration, at least in some quarters. Though the Papal States had been restored in 1800 and its small army revamped, they were surrounded by an Italy firmly under French control, and in the process of being reorganised into the States of Italy to the north and Parthenopea to the south. The Papacy appeared weak and vulnerable, and to some it seemed as if the entire Catholic world was crumbling under the hammer-blows of a new, godless tyranny. Pius continued to counsel caution and restrain, arguing that only by peaceful cooperation could the Church be preserved; to oppose him was to see it utterly destroyed. Until the horror of January 1805, he had been able to carry a majority of the Curia along with him, his policy having seemed to keep the peace. The one who would strike the balance appeared on the Roman political scene in 1807, in the form of a young priest by the name of Carlo Ventresca. He is known to have begun his career in the Dominican Order, and is thought to have been involved with the Roman Inquisition. If the latter is true, he was almost certainly involved in the transfer of Inquisitorial documents from Rome to Paris, a humiliation which may in part account for his ill-feeling towards France and the revolution. Though regarded as an outstanding priest, by 1807 he was known primarily for a series of fire-and-brimstone sermons, in which he preached of the coming of the End Times. This was ironic, for the power of his oratory seemed at times to be supernatural. It certainly came to unsettle the Curia, and in October of 1807 he was called to Rome to account for himself. If the Cardinals sought to suppress Ventresca, then allowing him to speak to them was easily their greatest mistake. So dazzled were they by his rhetoric, that the Curia unanimously dropped all charges laid against him. Ventresca was nevertheless ordered by Pius to remain in Rome for a personal audience; which he did for several weeks. If Pius truly intended to interview the young priest in private, he would never get the chance. On the morning of Friday the 13th of November 1807, Pius was found dead in his bed, having apparently died in his sleep. The events of the days following his funeral would prove equally shocking, for Ventresca was elected Pope by acclamation; the eighth and last Pope to be elected in that manner. Within days of his election, Pope Carlo I (he used his baptismal name) was speaking of a new direction for the Papacy, and the entire Catholic Church. In a series of addresses to the Curia, he railed against Bonaparte and the new, secular order he was imposing on Europe. He overtly blamed both for the misfortunes of Europe, notably the January Murders, and declared that the time had come for the Papacy to lead the establishment of a new order in Europe. Church and state would become one, and the Papacy would rule with the Imperial power it had inherited from the Roman Emperors. When one of the Cardinals pleaded that they had not the power to oppose France, Carlo retorted that he himself would provide the army. When asked how, he regaled the Curia with a story he claimed to have heard from a missionary who had worked in India. The story concerned the Guru Gobind Singh and the Panj Pyare, the 'five beloved ones' of the Sikh religion. The story went that the Guru had called upon his followers, asking who among them would give his head for him. Three times he asked without success, until one man at last volunteered. The Guru took the man into his tent, and then emerged with a bloodied sword in his hand. He asked for more volunteers, and four more stepped forward, each to be taken inside and killed. The Guru then emerged again, bringing with him the five supposedly dead men, dressed in warrior garb; reborn as the first of the Khalsa. ''Carlo declared that this was the kind of devotion he expected, whether of the Cardinals around him or the soldiers of the legions he would raise. The first of these he raised on New Year's Day of 1808, having summoned a thousand male volunteers to St Peter's Basilica. Carlo had himself locked inside the Basilica with a handful of devoted followers and the volunteers, with strict orders that no one from outside was to enter for any reason. The doors remained closed for some time, with onlookers reporting cries of terror and the sound of swords cutting cloth. All at once the doors swung open, and the thousand marched out in serried ranks, clad in new scarlet uniforms and shouldering muskets. Carlo emerged behind them, and proclaimed to the astonished crowd that this was only the first of his new Holy Legions, the army that would crush the godless tyranny of Bonaparte. The new legions would not be long in coming. By the end of March, Carlo had raised ten full legions, each numbering 5000, for a total of 50,000. Many of the officers were former officers and nobles from territories conquered by Bonaparte, though the rank and file was primarily Italian. The Papal States were transformed into a war economy seemingly overnight, as the common people worked round-the-clock to supply the Holy Legions with their arms and supplies, fired all the while by Carlo's sermons. But for all his success in raising followers, Carlo had not created an army out of nothing. Though the Papal army had been incorporated into the legions, the majority of the rank-and-file were raw recruits, whom Carlo's schedule gave little time for training. His first target was Parthenopea, its garrison busy with an insurgency in Calabria. Carlo led his troops south in early April, marching them with a vigour not unlike that of Bonaparte's own soldiers. When French forces attempted to oppose them, they noted the crude, unskilled manouevring of the Legions. But what truly shocked French officers was the zeal of the legionaries. They seemed to be without fear, advancing in their lumbering columns regardless of casualties. The French were overwhelmed, and Parthenopea was secure by the end of the month. With the assistance of Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo, Carlo managed to add the island of Sicily to his new domain, and raise substantial new forces. His army became known as the ''Armate della Santa Fede, ''the Army of Holy Faith. As overstretched as he was, Bonaparte could no longer ignore what had erupted in Italy. To make matters even worse, Carlo's agents had managed to spread word of his crusade in Spain, which erupted in revolt in May. Bonaparte rushed back to Paris, sending his newly-returned army south to reinforce the borders, and set about organising additional forces. Though he had many hundreds of thousands of troops at his disposal, many were spread across Germany, Italy, and the former Austrian territories to hold down the new Sister-Republics. The only reliable non-French source of fresh troops was Switzerland, which would reward Bonaparte for his 1803 Act of Mediation with four more regiments of infantry, on top of four they had already provided. Attempts to raise new troops in Germany proved unsuccessful, with the administration of the new republics dogged by rebellion, conspiracy, and underground resistance. The new state of Poland was an enthusiastic ally, but Bonaparte dared not draw on its services too much; Poland and its armies were a vital lynchpin of French control in Eastern Europe. But if Germany was mulishly stubborn, Scandinavia was positively rebellious. Denmark was firmly under French occupation, while Norway had been detached to form a state. But while the January Murders had claimed the life of King Gustav IV Adolph, the Swedish Riksdag had continued to govern without him, all the while searching for a suitable replacement. By May of 1808 Sweden was in the process of losing Finland to Russia, and Bonaparte had planned to send an expedition under Marshal Bernadotte to force Sweden into line; but this was cancelled. Bonaparte's overtures to the Riksdag were met with cold rejection, and even threats to form a union with Norway under a new, elected King. Worse, he learned to his horror that the Riksdag had approached Marshal Bernadotte with an offer of the crown. The situation left Bonaparte deeply torn. His relationship with Bernadotte had been strained for some time, but he could not believe that the man would betray him. If he allowed this to go ahead, then he himself would be betraying the new future so many had fought and died for. But if he tried to block it, he risked losing the whole of Scandinavia to the Russians, or a Russia-friendly monarchy that could lock France out of the Baltic sea. After the Riksdag sweetened the deal with an offer to base the Swedish kingship on election for life with no hereditary element (making him a life-serving Minister-President with regal titles and dignities), Bonaparte agreed to the plan and gave Bernadotte his blessing. When Cecile and Lucien called him out over it, arguing that he was diluting the Sister-Republic system and giving out too many special privileges, Bonaparte angrily retorted "''who cares if he wants to wear an over-complicated hat! I need those men!" ''Russia retaliated by declaring war in July of 1808, ostensibly in support of Carlo's crusade. It is said that when a courtier suggested that this new war would finally break Napoleon, Tsar Alexander declared "''only him? I'll break them both!" Darkness Descends Though Bonaparte and his government made great shows of confidence in the face of the triple threat of Russia, Spain, and the Crusade, others knew better. Attacked on three sides, Bonaparte enjoyed only two saving graces. For one, with Bernadotte now elected King of Sweden, Scandinavia was now secure for his union. The other was that his three enemies were proving somewhat slow to take advantage of his weakness. Russia had committed considerable forces to Sweden, and was finding it difficult to mobilise quickly against French holdings further south. Though Spanish troops and rebels had forced French forces from Spain, the ruling Junta ''was proving incapable of manifesting a coherent policy. In Italy, Pope Carlo had been persuaded to rest his forces for a few months, allowing reorganisation and additional training. When he advanced north in August, his main army of 80,000 was considerably better trained and led than it had been before. By then, Bonaparte had managed to send a few thousand troops and National Guardsmen south to reinforce the State of Italy. But this was by no means enough, and Bonapartec ''More to come 'Geography' 'Government' 'Military' The EU's armed forces are made up of the combined forces of the individual member states, known as 'State Forces'. These function as part of a standardized command structure, centered around Central Command HQ in Berlin. Uniforms and equipment, already based largely on German influence since the Russian War, are formally standardized under the Millennium Treaty. 'Organization' 'State Forces' 'German State Forces' 'French State Forces' 'British State Forces' Irish State Forces 'Russian State Forces' 'Danish State Forces' Belgian State Forces 'Austrian State Forces' 'Hungarian State Forces' 'Spanish State Forces' 'Italian State Forces' 'Greek State Forces' 'Turkish State Forces' 'Polish State Forces' 'Romanian State Forces' Bulgarian Sate Forces 'Czech State Forces' 'Slovakian State Forces' 'Finnish State Forces' 'Swedish State Forces' 'Norwegian State Forces' 'Anthem' The European Union's official anthem is Ludwig van Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" sung in Latin, which is the final movement of his Ninth Symphony that was completed in 1824 AD.